During hunting season, I take my husky out to the state land after dark. Sure, this makes running on forest trails a bit tricky, but if not that, I’d have to run along the canal trail with endless headlights in my face, or not run at all, or risk the hunters. So I run at night.
About seven o’clock, on my way to the dirt road down to the Stoney Pond trails, I passed a pickup in the parking area, apparently with someone there. I slowed my car and turned the headlights to check it out—some guy in an orange vest just sitting on the tailgate, patiently waiting. I had my suspicions, but he seemed fine, and since I could do nothing, continued.
After parking and running for about a quarter of a mile, my suspicions were likely confirmed. Blam! Blam! Just two shots, and this guy presumably got his deer, illegally, probably even driving over to pick it up. And not unique—a friend who lives 20 miles south of here reports that she hears shots daily before dawn (also illegal), and another woman I frequently run across walking her dog reports chasing hunters off her land regularly.
A few springs ago, I ran into a young guy carrying a bow and arrow, pregnant wife trotting behind him, campers from the campsite half a mile away. “Seen any geese?” he asked. How could I not. I had my dog on a retractable leash precisely because we saw plenty of geese, raising their goslings. Definitely not in season, and for good reason. He even suggested my dog could flush them for him (she’d hunt them herself, however). I declined.
Disregard for the law seems widespread. At first a few, and now many or even most of the nutty drivers doing dumb moves on the road are, as I take a look, on their cell phones. Let’s not even get into speeding or stop signs. Laws apply to other people. We’re a nation of law-breakers.
Starts at the top. The Bush Administration’s “interpretation” of U.S. law the Constitution has been creative at best. During the Nixon Administration’s woes, the mantra was “the President is not above the law.” Contrast that with Cheney’s contention that the administration makes reality.
What do we do with this? The U.S. is in a never-ending war in Iraq because of the Cheney/Rumsfeld version of reality proved either stupid or an outright lie. Certainly the White House lied about the details leading to the conflict. Now the news that the rhetoric about Iran’s nuclear progress is untrue—and was reported to the White House months ago.
What happens when the government actually does tell the truth, should that ever happen? How would we know?
And how can we pretend to be a nation of laws when both government and citizenry ignore those laws they find inconvenient?
We have found the enemy, as Pogo used to report, and “they is us.”
Writer
Showing posts with label Cheney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cheney. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Liberal? Conservative? Are You Sure? [A Rambling Economic Romp]
One of my students wrote a paper attacking the views of the liberal media, particularly George Will. No, that’s not a typo—that’s what she wrote, and what she meant. I wonder if staunch conservative Will realizes he’s converted. Truth is, the media has become quite conservative—look at FOX news, for example.
Other discussions in both the classroom and the corner store reveal a disturbing reality—people pick their favorite label, then their views. Democrat, Republican, Liberal, Conservative—these seem to be just words divorced from popular policy, and those misunderstandings lead to poor national choices.
Consider the proud Republicans who argue we must protect American jobs from foreign competition. Are they aware this is the Democrats’ position? Republicans would argue for free trade. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) especially seems to be a lightning rod, approved under President Clinton, despite the reality that the pact created ten times the number of jobs as it initially cost, the benefit continuing, the cost history, affected employees the beneficiaries of funding to cover the transition (and that funding exceeded the cost).
The WTO (World Trade Organization) also draws some fire, while other lesser known but important agreements, such as cooperation among the Pacific rim nations, seem to escape the radar. Any introductory macroeconomics text can lay out the well established case that such international trade benefits all parties (see comparative advantage). Why the opposition? More benefits are imported than exported.
At the same time, the same people oppose the United Nations, or any attempt at meaningful international law. So, while importing inexpensive food, clothing, toys, and so forth, we also abdicate the safety standards we trust in the U.S., putting ourselves at risk. Sound counterproductive?
How about fiscal responsibility? Instead of runaway spending and high taxes, we should pay as we go!
Not a Republican position—Reagan quadrupled the national debt, changing the largest creditor nation into the largest debtor nation. Clinton turned that around, generating the largest peacetime expansion in U.S. history, upsetting the conventional hawkish view that expanding economies need a war. Bush brought the U.S. back to both war and burgeoning deficits.
Interestingly, here Democrats and Conservatives agree! Pay for programs, wars as they come. Vice-President Cheney disagrees, claiming “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” That’s like running up your credit card, pretending you’ll never have trouble making payments. It only works so long. As Howard Dean noted, “borrow and spend” isn’t better than the “tax and spend” mantra often leveled.
Think we need to reel in such spending? Great. That’s Republican—until you talk about which programs you want to cut. “Wait! I just want to cut the waste!” You know it’s not as easy as that, right? And I’m sure you know cutting your household spending isn’t as easy as deciding to do it.
Take health care. The U.S. spends more per capita than any nation—yet we’re the only industrial nation without universal health care—25% of Americans uninsured. So what? Their problem? Not when their serious conditions find their way to the emergency room at tax payer expenses instead of cheaper preventions. “Yeah, but universal health care will mean trade-offs!” You don’t think we have trade-offs now? Even if you think we should just abandon those people without means, that will inevitably affect the crime rate for people with no options and nothing less to lose. Fine? More law and order? That costs money too.
Or military spending. The U.S. spends more on the military than any other nation by a fantastic margin. Overkill? What are we really getting for it? Rumsfeld sent us down a path (ignoring Gen. Colin Powell—what the hell does HE know about Iraq…) merely stretching and demoralizing our forces, even causing commissioned officers to quit in droves. That’s money down the drain.
Much of this economic mumbo-jumbo is built on misunderstandings. In the 1920s. Americans benefited from sales to Europe, temporarily ravaged by WWI. It didn’t last, catching up to us in the 1930s. Prosperity returned in the 1950s—selling to a Europe ravaged by WWII, but again, this couldn’t last. In the 1960s, Democrat presidents ran up the deficit, and in the stagflation years of the 1970s, conservative Republican Nixon abolished the gold standard to allow currency to float—and wisely so, to the chagrin of conservatives.
Here’s the thing. We talk about liberals and conservatives, but we inherit these labels and their positions from talk radio instead of thinking for ourselves. Consequently, we even end up voting for the people whose positions we oppose—we just don’t know it.
Writer
Other discussions in both the classroom and the corner store reveal a disturbing reality—people pick their favorite label, then their views. Democrat, Republican, Liberal, Conservative—these seem to be just words divorced from popular policy, and those misunderstandings lead to poor national choices.
Consider the proud Republicans who argue we must protect American jobs from foreign competition. Are they aware this is the Democrats’ position? Republicans would argue for free trade. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) especially seems to be a lightning rod, approved under President Clinton, despite the reality that the pact created ten times the number of jobs as it initially cost, the benefit continuing, the cost history, affected employees the beneficiaries of funding to cover the transition (and that funding exceeded the cost).
The WTO (World Trade Organization) also draws some fire, while other lesser known but important agreements, such as cooperation among the Pacific rim nations, seem to escape the radar. Any introductory macroeconomics text can lay out the well established case that such international trade benefits all parties (see comparative advantage). Why the opposition? More benefits are imported than exported.
At the same time, the same people oppose the United Nations, or any attempt at meaningful international law. So, while importing inexpensive food, clothing, toys, and so forth, we also abdicate the safety standards we trust in the U.S., putting ourselves at risk. Sound counterproductive?
How about fiscal responsibility? Instead of runaway spending and high taxes, we should pay as we go!
Not a Republican position—Reagan quadrupled the national debt, changing the largest creditor nation into the largest debtor nation. Clinton turned that around, generating the largest peacetime expansion in U.S. history, upsetting the conventional hawkish view that expanding economies need a war. Bush brought the U.S. back to both war and burgeoning deficits.
Interestingly, here Democrats and Conservatives agree! Pay for programs, wars as they come. Vice-President Cheney disagrees, claiming “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” That’s like running up your credit card, pretending you’ll never have trouble making payments. It only works so long. As Howard Dean noted, “borrow and spend” isn’t better than the “tax and spend” mantra often leveled.
Think we need to reel in such spending? Great. That’s Republican—until you talk about which programs you want to cut. “Wait! I just want to cut the waste!” You know it’s not as easy as that, right? And I’m sure you know cutting your household spending isn’t as easy as deciding to do it.
Take health care. The U.S. spends more per capita than any nation—yet we’re the only industrial nation without universal health care—25% of Americans uninsured. So what? Their problem? Not when their serious conditions find their way to the emergency room at tax payer expenses instead of cheaper preventions. “Yeah, but universal health care will mean trade-offs!” You don’t think we have trade-offs now? Even if you think we should just abandon those people without means, that will inevitably affect the crime rate for people with no options and nothing less to lose. Fine? More law and order? That costs money too.
Or military spending. The U.S. spends more on the military than any other nation by a fantastic margin. Overkill? What are we really getting for it? Rumsfeld sent us down a path (ignoring Gen. Colin Powell—what the hell does HE know about Iraq…) merely stretching and demoralizing our forces, even causing commissioned officers to quit in droves. That’s money down the drain.
Much of this economic mumbo-jumbo is built on misunderstandings. In the 1920s. Americans benefited from sales to Europe, temporarily ravaged by WWI. It didn’t last, catching up to us in the 1930s. Prosperity returned in the 1950s—selling to a Europe ravaged by WWII, but again, this couldn’t last. In the 1960s, Democrat presidents ran up the deficit, and in the stagflation years of the 1970s, conservative Republican Nixon abolished the gold standard to allow currency to float—and wisely so, to the chagrin of conservatives.
Here’s the thing. We talk about liberals and conservatives, but we inherit these labels and their positions from talk radio instead of thinking for ourselves. Consequently, we even end up voting for the people whose positions we oppose—we just don’t know it.
Writer
Thursday, June 21, 2007
An Open Letter to the Hawks
Dear Red-Tailed Hawks:
For quite some time, I have enjoyed watching you circle above the land, floating on the thermals, presumably looking for prey. I’ve even seen you sitting on the utility wires, and a few times standing by the side of the road. Given your strong numbers, your clear proximity, and your superior vision (eight times greater than human eyesight!), I can’t help but wonder a few things about your behavior.
My land is increasingly overrun with voles. The unsightly valleys they dig, yards and yards and yards of them, exacerbated by erosion, just get worse every year. They’ve even killed trees, and my neighbors tell similar stories, including that the problem just gets worse every year. We also all complain about rabbits, and again, they are worse every year. Last year, they destroyed my entire orchard, save one apricot tree. This year, we are all growing large gardens, even those of us who decided in past years that we just didn’t have the time, largely because the high price of gasoline has pushed the price of produce so high. We’d hate to lose this to rabbits.
The encyclopedias report that your primary diet is rodents and small game like rabbits, so we were wondering—what’s the problem? Why don’t you swoop down and help yourselves? Granted, some prey, like birds and chipmunks, keep the cover of the trees, but I can’t walk across the lawn to the garden without seeing voles, and as I strive to keep the grass cut—why don’t YOU see them? Rabbits too—they get hit in the road everyday. Is your vision overrated? Or do you just not care?
I admit my species can’t do much better. Just as we can’t seem to control the voles and rabbits, the hawks in Washington circle above the country seemingly just as aloof as you to our persistent and growing problems. A quarter of the country’s people have no health insurance, and as costs rise, that percentage does too, so people wait until they must go to the emergency room, a much higher cost to the nation than preventative care. Funding and management for natural disasters remains inadequate, and past victims are still coldly left to fend for themselves. Social Security will need some adjustments, and even though it now shows a surplus the government uses to fund its debt in other areas, and even though preventing a crisis still a few decades away is readily achievable now, the will to do so seems absent. Pollution keeps getting worse, but the government continues to study it, deny it, whitewash it, excuse it. And education is so bad that we even graduate college students who can’t write correct sentences—and yet we keep cutting funding for education.
Our hawks ARE good at attacking things when they want—but only attacking. Going after Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was one thing, but invading Iraq seems so ill-advised that even the administration’s party big-wigs advised against it; brushing off such seasoned advice, the administration arrogantly attacked anyway, confident of quick victory and ushering in a peace that would spread throughout the region, even to Palestine. Instead, we now see endless civil war in Iraq, thousands of deaths, and a drain of billions of dollars—all likely to continue for several years.
These hawks even blindly attack their own allies in their own partisan operations, to their own detriment. After hiring a well-respected Secretary of State, a seasoned general of the FIRST Iraq war, the administration side-lined him, replacing him with a Sovietologist—who has managed to sour own relations with Russia to the point where their President has threatened to re-aim missiles at Western targets. Although elder party leaders have stressed the importance of talking to regional players like Syria and Iran, the administration refuses to negotiate unless absolutely forced to do so. And when one good public servant accurately questioned the administration’s distortion of “factual” evidence, administration officials rabidly turned to punish him by destroying his wife’s CIA cover—an act of treason. They followed up by lying to the grand jury, in strict violation of the U.S. law they’re sworn to protect.
When anyone questions the hawks, those critics are ridiculed as advocating “cut and run” policies—even seeing their patriotism attacked. This is an old game, of course, as even early presidents like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were attacked as cowards when they opted to build trade with other nations instead of attacking them. Ironic that we refer to a strongly constructed woodworking joint as a “dovetail.” Building is so much harder, and takes so much more long-term courage than attacking things. No wonder that Jefferson famously observed that given the choice between government and the press, he’d prefer the press—and no wonder that the administration so hates and mistrusts the press. After all, I’ve frequently noted small birds chasing hawks away.
Perhaps, then, you hawks are simply judicious, knowing when to pursue, when to back away. Perhaps you simply choose your targets carefully, seeking balance, not vendetta. And, I suppose, you could fairly ask that since I have a dog who has already proven her competence against both vole and rabbit, why don’t I simply let her loose to address the invasion? The answer is that she wouldn’t be so focused, but would hunt indiscriminately, wandering far off our home turf.
Come to think of it, maybe we don’t have hawks in Washington after all. Maybe we have dogs.
Writer
For quite some time, I have enjoyed watching you circle above the land, floating on the thermals, presumably looking for prey. I’ve even seen you sitting on the utility wires, and a few times standing by the side of the road. Given your strong numbers, your clear proximity, and your superior vision (eight times greater than human eyesight!), I can’t help but wonder a few things about your behavior.
My land is increasingly overrun with voles. The unsightly valleys they dig, yards and yards and yards of them, exacerbated by erosion, just get worse every year. They’ve even killed trees, and my neighbors tell similar stories, including that the problem just gets worse every year. We also all complain about rabbits, and again, they are worse every year. Last year, they destroyed my entire orchard, save one apricot tree. This year, we are all growing large gardens, even those of us who decided in past years that we just didn’t have the time, largely because the high price of gasoline has pushed the price of produce so high. We’d hate to lose this to rabbits.
The encyclopedias report that your primary diet is rodents and small game like rabbits, so we were wondering—what’s the problem? Why don’t you swoop down and help yourselves? Granted, some prey, like birds and chipmunks, keep the cover of the trees, but I can’t walk across the lawn to the garden without seeing voles, and as I strive to keep the grass cut—why don’t YOU see them? Rabbits too—they get hit in the road everyday. Is your vision overrated? Or do you just not care?
I admit my species can’t do much better. Just as we can’t seem to control the voles and rabbits, the hawks in Washington circle above the country seemingly just as aloof as you to our persistent and growing problems. A quarter of the country’s people have no health insurance, and as costs rise, that percentage does too, so people wait until they must go to the emergency room, a much higher cost to the nation than preventative care. Funding and management for natural disasters remains inadequate, and past victims are still coldly left to fend for themselves. Social Security will need some adjustments, and even though it now shows a surplus the government uses to fund its debt in other areas, and even though preventing a crisis still a few decades away is readily achievable now, the will to do so seems absent. Pollution keeps getting worse, but the government continues to study it, deny it, whitewash it, excuse it. And education is so bad that we even graduate college students who can’t write correct sentences—and yet we keep cutting funding for education.
Our hawks ARE good at attacking things when they want—but only attacking. Going after Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was one thing, but invading Iraq seems so ill-advised that even the administration’s party big-wigs advised against it; brushing off such seasoned advice, the administration arrogantly attacked anyway, confident of quick victory and ushering in a peace that would spread throughout the region, even to Palestine. Instead, we now see endless civil war in Iraq, thousands of deaths, and a drain of billions of dollars—all likely to continue for several years.
These hawks even blindly attack their own allies in their own partisan operations, to their own detriment. After hiring a well-respected Secretary of State, a seasoned general of the FIRST Iraq war, the administration side-lined him, replacing him with a Sovietologist—who has managed to sour own relations with Russia to the point where their President has threatened to re-aim missiles at Western targets. Although elder party leaders have stressed the importance of talking to regional players like Syria and Iran, the administration refuses to negotiate unless absolutely forced to do so. And when one good public servant accurately questioned the administration’s distortion of “factual” evidence, administration officials rabidly turned to punish him by destroying his wife’s CIA cover—an act of treason. They followed up by lying to the grand jury, in strict violation of the U.S. law they’re sworn to protect.
When anyone questions the hawks, those critics are ridiculed as advocating “cut and run” policies—even seeing their patriotism attacked. This is an old game, of course, as even early presidents like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were attacked as cowards when they opted to build trade with other nations instead of attacking them. Ironic that we refer to a strongly constructed woodworking joint as a “dovetail.” Building is so much harder, and takes so much more long-term courage than attacking things. No wonder that Jefferson famously observed that given the choice between government and the press, he’d prefer the press—and no wonder that the administration so hates and mistrusts the press. After all, I’ve frequently noted small birds chasing hawks away.
Perhaps, then, you hawks are simply judicious, knowing when to pursue, when to back away. Perhaps you simply choose your targets carefully, seeking balance, not vendetta. And, I suppose, you could fairly ask that since I have a dog who has already proven her competence against both vole and rabbit, why don’t I simply let her loose to address the invasion? The answer is that she wouldn’t be so focused, but would hunt indiscriminately, wandering far off our home turf.
Come to think of it, maybe we don’t have hawks in Washington after all. Maybe we have dogs.
Writer
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